Awareness comes and goes like day and night—let the quiet times refuel you, and just watch both without clinging.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Sometimes I feel aware and sometimes not. Awareness seems to pulsate. Does this pulsating slowly disappear or does it go suddenly?
In life everything is a rhythm. You are happy and then follows unhappiness. Night and day, summer and winter; life is a rhythm between two opposites. When you try to become aware the same rhythm will be there: sometimes you are aware and sometimes not. So don't create a problem, because you are such experts in creating problems that out of the blue you can create a problem. And once you have created a problem then you want to solve it. And then there are people who will supply you with answers. A wrong problem is always answered by a wrong answer. And then it can go on ad infinitum; then a wrong answer again creates questions. From the very beginning one has to be aware not to create a wrong problem. Otherwise the whole of life goes on and on in the wrong direction. Always try to understand not…Read the full discourse →
Beloved Osho, as you know, the old zen custom was that a monk should stay with his master for ten years before he went out on his own teaching. There is a zen story about a monk who had completed his ten years in the monastery. One rainy day the monk visited his master, nan-in. After nan-in had greeted him, he said to the monk, "no doubt you have left your shoes in the vestibule. On which side of your umbrella did you leave your shoes?" for a moment the monk hesitated, and through that hesitation realized that he was not in every-minute zen.
YOU HAVE TOLD US THAT LIFE HAS A PULSATION -- IN AND OUT, YIN AND YANG. DO WE HAVE TO KEEP TRYING FOR EVERY-MINUTE AWARENESS, OR CAN WE TOO PULSATE WITH LIFE, AND AT TIMES LET GO OUR TRYING? You can rest with restlessness inside you. You can lie down on the ground, but the restlessness goes on inside. So you are simply lying down, but it is not a rest. You may sit like a buddha and inside the child is running -- the mind is working and functioning. Inside you are going mad: outside you are sitting in a buddha posture. You can be totally static outside, not moving, no activity, and inside, the turmoil goes on. This won't help. Finish the turmoil in effort. Run as fast as you can. Be exhausted! Hence, my emphasis on Dynamic Meditation. It is both effort and effortlessness. It is both…Read the full discourse →
Osho, you say that if there is awareness, then how are the two to be brought into harmony?
That is precisely the practice of active meditation: awareness. Awareness is the very means of going into emptiness in relation to all actions, to the movements of the mind as well. For example, if you lie there for half an hour—what will you do? In that half hour, whatever thoughts are moving in your mind, you are to be simply aware of them. Simply a witness—what else will you do? Just become a witness. Keep silently watching; let them move. But obstacles arise in our seeing. We become absorbed. We fail to remain a witness. We don’t even notice when we have become one with those very thoughts. That sense of awareness fades; a kind of stupor, a moorchha, comes in. A thought comes, a memory arises, and we stop being the watcher. We become part of that thought and of its flow. That is moorchha. And the opposite is…Read the full discourse →
Sometimes I feel in a state of non-doing, very passive, but may awareness of what is happening around me seems less. In fact, I feel detached from things around me. This somehow means false passivity, as I imagine on-doing should be synonymous with increased awareness. Can you please define this state?
Ordinarily we are in a feverish state -- active, but feverishly. If you become passive the fever will be lost. If you become passive, non-doing, if you relax within yourself, activity will be lost, fever will be lost, and the intensity that comes through fever will not be there. You will feel a little dull, you will feel as if your awareness is decreasing. It is not decreasing; only the feverish glow is decreasing. And it is good, so don't be afraid of it, and don't think that this passivity is not real. This is being said by your mind which needs and wants the feverish activity and the glow that comes through fever. Fever is not awareness, but in fever you can have a very unhealthy awareness, alertness. That is diseased; don't hanker for it. Allow it to go, fall into passivity. In the beginning it will look like…Read the full discourse →
Beloved Osho, when relaxing and turning inwards there is a moment when I either become sharply aware, being at the same time totally relaxed as if not there, or I fall asleep. I don't know what triggers the first state rather than the second. Could you please explain?
The state when you are relaxed and become very sharply awake takes you closer to the superconscious. And the state when you are relaxed but fall into a peaceful sleep leads you towards the unconscious mind. Certainly the first state is far superior to the second, but the second may also be necessary for you; otherwise it would not have been happening. Remember one principle: whatever happens is somehow needed, whether we understand it or not. They look totally different -- not only different, but diametrically opposite -- but they may be helping each other. When you are tired, relaxation will take you to a calm and quiet sleep that rejuvenates you, revitalizes you, brings your energy back. It is healthy; nothing is wrong with it. It will give you a certain well-being, which may become the ground for the first state. You are fully revitalized, rejuvenated, full of energy,…Read the full discourse →